Okay I’ve seen it so many times now that I went and watched the video (the one the article also links to), and I can confirm that this quote has absolutely nothing to do with AI image generation. The first part of the quote in the post title makes this pretty obvious. Miyazaki watched a diseased hunk of flesh struggle to pull itself forward in an attempt to please the trainer that it knows how to move. This was his reaction.
Would Miyazaki have a similar quote to say about AI images? Maybe. Possibly even probably. But this ain’t it.
The full quote in video is even more devastating to the AI programmer who was demoing it than that tidbit. You can see the moment the light leaves his eyes
That was devastating.
He had been so proud of what they had created and then just crushed.
Yeah, if a master of his craft tells you that what you’ve made is an insult to life itself, I don’t think there’s anything left to do but walk into the sea.
Miyazaki watched a diseased hunk of flesh struggle to pull itself forward in an attempt to please the trainer that it knows how to move.
That was created by machine learning so the quote still fits.
Date a person with a future, like the furry artists of old.
They probably get paid very well. Think prices go up higher the more uncommon the kink.
You want to date the artist that makes vore vomit amputee furry scat art, is what I’m suggesting.
Wait they’re charging a dollar for that shit??
Who’s charging a dollar per image?
The “insult to life itself” quote was about an animation that was supposed to be creepy, but reminded him of how his disabled friend moved, wasn’t it? I thought it was about the art actually, albeit unintentionally, directly insulting someone.
"Every morning, not in recent days, I see my friend who has a disability. It’s so hard for him just to do a high five; his arm with stiff muscle can’t reach out to my hand. Now, thinking of him, I can’t watch this stuff and find it interesting. Whoever creates this stuff has no idea what pain is.
I am utterly disgusted. If you really want to make creepy stuff, you can go ahead and do it, but I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all. I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself."
What he’s talking (imo) about is how the images produced by the technology aren’t art, because they don’t comprehend the human pain that would inspire true art. They’re just creepy stuff
Every scene in Miyazaki’s movies is filled with a bunch of pixels that can’t comprehend pain. The technology not comprehending the pain can’t be the point because technology has never been able to (so far).
In Miyazaki’s manga version of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind there is a scene where the Forest expands dramatically through a giant blob of fungus that is moved by a desperate and overwhelming sense of hatred and fear. At first Nausicaa is revolted by it, until she recognizes that this is the same desperation that drove a similar but tiny mobile fungus (probably inspired by IRL slime molds) she had once found in the wild. That realization enables her to be empathetic with even that simple desperate being, and act on that empathy.
I don’t think Miyazaki is saying it’s a problem that the technology or its products don’t comprehend pain. I think he’s saying the people that train the AI are creating a being that is (or at least would be) in pain, without bothering to empathize with it.
From a Miyazaki perspective, it doesn’t make sense to see AI as an outside threat, foreign and loathsome. AI is possible beings, enslaved through the training algorithm to their owners. It’s not (just) the machines in the factory farm, it’s the animals lead to slaughter for a brief moment of vapid pleasure.
He concluded with,
“I feel like we are nearing the end of times. We humans are losing faith in ourselves.”
He’s talking about technology replacing artists.
He’s a great piece someone wrote about the modern situation, in this context, which included a video of the conversation
